


Later

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Domestic...ish, F/M, Pre-Canon, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-18
Updated: 2006-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he marries her in May, he knows nothing.  Later, he will learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Later

**Author's Note:**

> Written for prompt number 256, a story about Benny's home life including a mention of a pet and a 'scare' of some sort, on the speed_rent community on livejournal.

He marries her in May. The church is old, formed out of gray stone, insulated and air conditioned. The sky is light blue, brighter than he’s ever seen in the city, and scattered with large, pale clouds. Allison wears a white dress, her mother’s diamond earrings, her grandmother’s necklace. They write their own vows. She won’t let him see her before the ceremony, so he stands with one hand pressed flat against the door and says, “I love you,” just loud enough for her to hear, waits until she says it back before he leaves.

 

*

 

Later, he will learn about her. He will learn that she sings as she walks down the stairs—soft, cheerful tunes he does not recognize. He will learn that she eats breakfast every day and that, instead of reading the paper, she props open thick paperback romances and turns the pages with her painted nails. He will learn that she always gets up early, and that the nights she spent with him, when they first met, were the latest she had ever stayed up.

 

*

 

After the ceremony, they spill out onto the lawn for the reception. Her father and her uncles congratulate him. Their hands on his shoulders are heavy. Her mother kisses him on both cheeks and wipes tears from her eyes. She tells him she has never been happier in her life and he can only smile in answer.

 

Roger and Collins stand under one of the trees, clink their glasses together, and Roger makes sweeping gestures with his hands. Collins is laughing so hard he is doubled over. Maureen leads Mark out into the sun. She is trying to get him to dance.

 

Allison stands next to Benny, one hand on his arm. She follows his gaze across the lawn, spots Maureen, pulling at Mark’s hands, and Mark, shaking his head, pulling away. “Your friend is shy,” Allison says. Her tone implies that she finds this sweet, rather endearing.

 

But Benny answers, “No,” and smiles. “Mark’s a lot of things, but he’s not shy.”

 

*

 

Later, he will learn that she loves animals. Every day, in their new house, she will say, “It’s so lonely,” or “It’s so quiet.” He will be afraid that she wants kids, but what she wants, really, is a pet. Benny will hope to compromise on something small and quiet and low maintenance, like a fish. He used to have fish, when he was younger. But they haven’t been married long, and he does hate to argue with her, and he knows that, in the end, he will lose.

 

*

 

“If you’re interested in joining the business…” his father-in-law is saying. Benny nods, waits to say yes. Of course. He wants to work for Mr. Grey and he wants to become rich. And with these riches his life will finally change.

 

At the next table over, Roger is talking, his voice too loud and his words slurred. “Why would I bring my new girlfriend to a wedding?” he’s saying. “Like I really need April getting any ideas in her head!”

 

No one tries to calm him down. Collins only yells out, “You’re durrr….unk!” so that everyone in the wedding party can hear, and Maureen starts to laugh. 

 

Allison throws him a look that says, “You should be grateful I’m pretending they’re not here.”

 

*

 

Later, he will learn that she has lived a life of privilege. He will learn that she has never known the want he has known. He will learn that this gap of experience separates them, and that they must bridge it slowly.

 

And slowly, slowly, they do.

 

He will begin to depend on the luxuries she depends on. He will forget hunger, and the whistle of cold wind around window frames, and fear.

 

He will sit at his desk, working out figures, moving around numbers, making projections. He will feel, suddenly, her arms around him and her kiss at his cheek. He will be happy.

 

*

 

Mark is missing. He has, in fact, been missing for a while. Benny hears Maureen mention this, in a casual, unconcerned way. He wanders back into the church, to look for Mark or just to get away, he isn’t sure.

 

Mark is sitting in the third pew. His head is bowed, and he might be praying, except that now Benny sees he is staring at a piece of paper he holds tight in his hands.

 

“Are my new in-laws so insufferable that you have to hide out here?” Benny asks lightly. Mark looks up at the sound of the voice, but his expression is startled and absent, and Benny knows he didn’t hear a word.

 

“So, what—”

 

“Congratulations,” Mark interrupts. “Allison seems very…nice.”

 

Benny can’t answer, not that comment, not from Mark, who doesn’t care one way or the other about his new wife. So he shrugs, says, “You’re not in here because Allison is nice.”

 

He can barely see Mark’s face in the shadows of the church. He waits ten seconds, maybe more, until Mark forces the crumbled paper into Benny’s hands and says, suddenly loud in the empty spaces, “If my mother knew I had an HIV test she would have a heart attack.”

 

Benny’s breath catches quickly. A flashing image hits him, there and gone, enough, of Mark in a hospital bed, dying of AIDS. Then he makes out, through the dusky light filtering in through the high stained glass windows, the dark letters that read NEGATIVE.

 

“It’s what I wanted to see,” Mark is saying. “But I haven’t been able to stop looking at it. Like I’m afraid it’s going to change. It’s ridiculous, I know. I can’t help it.”

 

*

 

Later, he will learn to read her. He will learn the difference between her society laugh and her private laugh. He will learn to recognize the way she winks at him, in the middle of an important business dinner, to remind him of what is important in his life. 

 

He will learn that when she smiles wide enough to show all of her teeth, she is happy. When she only shows the first two, she is being polite. And when her mouth stretches into that thin, curved line, she is hiding her anger. She is storing it. She is waiting to let it explode, as it will, at him in a private room.

 

“Why are you doing this?” she will say. “Why do you have to be this way?”

 

*

 

Benny tears the paper in two and sits down next to Mark in the third pew. They do not speak. They wait to be discovered. They wait for the change to settle in.

 

Later, he will learn. But right now, today, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything at all.


End file.
